Terry Gierke, a former NFL head linesman whose resume includes three championship games and a Super Bowl, happened to flip on Sunday's Jets-Patriots tilt in overtime and witnessed the call by umpire Tony Michalek that Chris Jones had pushed his teammate on Nick Folk's field goal try.

After researching exactly what the infraction was -- Gierke retired from NFL officiating work at the end of 2001 -- he was asked if he would have blown a whistle in that situation.

His response? "That's an awfully tough call to make at that point in the game."

"The one thing you want to do, you want the play to jump out at you," Gierke told NJ.com. "It's got to be significant, it has to be some advantage gained. There really didn't seem to be any advantage gained."

The former official compared it to making a call on aiding or assisting a runner. "How many times down near the goal line [do] you have a lineman who blocks his runner in the back and forces him across? You never see that call," he said.

Of course, there are some details emerging that might have given the officiating crew more focus on making that call. FoxSports' Mike Pereira tweeted yesterday that "examples of this were put on the officials weekly training tape pointing out instances where it wasn't called this season but should've been." There was also a report that Jets coaches warned officials about what the Pats did on special teams.

Gierke said that if emphasis was put on the penalty because of complaints or because the league had seen teams give an unnoticed push, that would be a reason the crew might be on the lookout. But he went through a list of questions asking if that's the kind of call that would be made in a significant moment such as a potential game-winning score in an overtime game. "You want the teams to decide. You don't want to call something that's borderline," Gierke said. "Was an advantage gained? Did they come close to blocking the kick? No. Was this a really huge infraction? Based on what I could see, I couldn't see it fell under any of those categories."